


Beautiful

by Anonymous



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Beta, Rape/Non-con Elements, Recovery, Slade is unredeemable in this one, Stockholm Syndrome, this fic is unsexy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:06:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29729460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “He called me beautiful.”Those were the first words to come out of Dick’s mouth in weeks other than a series of yeses and noes. Not a question, not a demand—just a statement of fact, inviting no reply.Or, the batfam dealing with the aftermath of Dick being kidnapped by Slade, feat. Stockhom Syndrome galore.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Slade Wilson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 147
Collections: Anonymous





	Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags, y'all. These are some crazy times. Stay safe.

I.

“He called me beautiful.”

Those were the first words to come out of Dick’s mouth in weeks other than a series of  _ yeses  _ and  _ noes.  _ Not a question, not a demand—just a statement of fact, inviting no reply. 

_ He called me beautiful _ .

There was no doubting who  _ he _ was.  _ He,  _ the man who crossed paths with Bruce’s son a countless number of times through the years.  _ He, _ the man whose obsession Bruce thought in the end would turn out benign.  _ He, _ the man who kidnapped Bruce’s son and imprisoned him and raped him and called him  _ beautiful _ . 

After a long pause, Bruce formulated a reply: “Have you eaten?”

Dick, lying on the sunroom couch as he was prone to these days, shook his head. 

“Well. I’m sure Alfred has something in the kitchen.”

Bruce, sitting on the linen corner chair with his paperwork as he himself was prone to these days, waited for a reply. Finally, Dick shrugged, an awkward, stifled movement against the couch cushions. 

“Sure.”

Bruce felt something in his chest drop. ‘Sure’ was too indifferent, too apathetic. Bruce craved even a small act of defiance from his son, even if his son was already too thin and in need of a meal. 

“Sure?” Bruce repeated. 

“Sure,” Dick said. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Bruce shifted on the couch, setting his paper work on the end table. Dick sat up, his hair a mess from lying down all day. For the first time all month, the winter sun contained streaks of warm orange. The light sank through the sunroom’s windows, obscured partially by the snow laden tree branches above. A strange map of sunlight and shadow settled on Dick’s skin. Dick’s eyelashes shone honey blonde against his cheeks. Bruce found himself looking, hurting. Then Dick’s eyes flickered up. 

_ He called me beautiful.  _

Not a question, not a demand. Just a statement of fact. 

  
  
  


When they found him, Slade was already gone. The cabin was nearly peaceful: mugs, freshly washed, dried on the rack beneath the kitchen window. The carpet near the fireplace was still warm. Large footprints tracked through the snow, beginning on the front porch steps and disappearing at the edge of the road. The stride suggested that the owner was tall and well built, the depth that his pace was slow, near languid. Halfway to the road, the footprints came to rest side by side, as if their owner took a moment to stand amongst the fresh snow and look upward at the wintry sky. To feel the brisk wind brush over his cheekbones. To gaze upon a winter morning. 

“Where do you think he went?” 

Those were the next new words to come out of Dick’s mouth. Again, they were in the sunroom, Dick lounged flat on his back on the sofa, Bruce seated with his paper work on the linen corner chair. Dick spoke the words as though Slade hadn’t run away. As though Slade had simply left on a grocery run with the full intention to return when Bruce broke into the cabin. 

As though Slade didn’t mean to leave Dick behind. 

Bruce cleared his throat. 

“I hear Jason is coming over for dinner.”

He didn’t hear this from Jason directly. Jason only communicated his intentions to Bruce through his siblings and Alfred, a fact which would never stop hurting Bruce, but which was also becoming a regular part of life. This time, Bruce heard from Alfred. Jason’s visit would be his second since they found Dick. Jason was the only one who accompanied Bruce to the cabin. 

“Huh,” Dick said. He shifted on the couch, his back now facing the windows, his face obscured. The sunlight was cold again. Thin and milky. “Is he staying the night?”

During Jason’s first visit, Dick was still too high on drugs to fully register his brother’s presence. Lying in his childhood bed, the lights dim, only the curtains parted, Dick must’ve latched onto Jason’s tall, broad silhouette. 

“Slade?” Dick had slurred, reaching a hand blindly out. Bruce, only a step behind Jason, watched as Jason’s shoulders tensed. Then, without saying another word, Jason turned around and left. 

“Possibly,” Bruce said, keeping his eyes down at his paperwork. “You know how he is.”

Jason arrived an hour before dinner, parking his bike out front with a tarp thrown over it. His presence stirred up the house hold a little bit, summoning Cass, Tim, and Damian from their rooms. “The kids,” as Dick and Jason liked to call them, had been uncharacteristically quiet since Dick’s return. Damian had, at first, attempted to pretend everything was normal. At dinners, Damian sent little jabs at Dick, anticipating a witty response. When Dick took his evening naps, Damian would nap along with him, even though, at ten, Damian had long outgrew napping and was quite a few years from developing the habit again. Then, in the first week, Damian woke up to blood on Dick’s bedspread, which he traced to the seat of Dick’s pajama bottoms. Dick was still asleep. Quietly, Damian crept downstairs and knocked on Bruce’s office door. In a slightly hushed tone, he whispered that Dick was bleeding. His forehead was scrunched then, as though he logically understood why Dick bled, but still couldn’t fully believe it. With a nod, Bruce dismissed Damian, who left to take Titus for a walk around the perimeter. Then Bruce strode upstairs, gently waking Dick with gentle shakes of his shoulder. 

“ _ Hm? _ ” Dick had said. Bruce’s eyes darted towards the empty part of the bed where Damian had been. There was, sure enough, a partially obscured spot of blood. 

“Chum,” Bruce said, voice low for Dick’s sleep sensitive ears. “You’re bleeding.”

“I am?” Dick mumbled. 

“Yes. Let me check your stitches.”

Dick sighed, but rolled to lie flat on the bed. He pulled his shirt up, revealing a neat line of stitches along his oblique. 

“Okay. Other side.”

Dick rolled over onto his stomach. Bruce lifted up his shirt this time. The stitches there were also neat. Then, lightly, Bruce peeled back the blanket resting over Dick’s bottom. A splotch of blood colored the seat of his pajamas. 

“Okay. Alright,” Bruce said, collecting himself. Bleeding from the stitches would’ve been much worse, but the blood on the back of Dick’s pants hurt Bruce the most. “You’re alright, Chum.”

Dick, now more awake, seemed to sense the wetness of the blood. A hand reached back, just shy of touching the dark spot. 

“Why don’t you get changed,” Bruce said. Dick nodded mutely, rising from the covers and shuffling shly toward his dresser. Bruce kept his eyes averted. Only once Dick closed his bathroom door behind him did Bruce strip off the bedspread and dig through Dick’s bottom drawers for a new set. By the time that Dick emerged, there was a new, clean blue set of sheets on Dick’s bed, the old sheets stuffed deep in Dick’s hamper. Dick said nothing about the change. Later that evening, while Dick was lounging on the sunroom couch, his ears plugged in to some audiobook, Bruce snuck back upstairs to retrieve the bedsheets. He knew from personal experience that blood was particularly hard to remove. Hard, but not impossible. Alfred usually cleaned Dick’s sheets, since Dick only visited intermittently. Tim and Damian, the permanent residents, were required to clean their own. Bruce, however, couldn't stand the thought of Alfred later dumping Dick’s sheets into the washer and spotting the marks of blood. Alfred would understand immediately, and Bruce didn’t want Alfred to have more pain. So Bruce took the sheets to the washroom himself and hand washed out the blood until the blood was pink, sepia—then gone. 

Damian became, much like Tim and Cass, quiet after that. 

  
  
  


“You wanna do something?” Jason asked awkwardly, standing over Dick’s form on the sunroom couch. Dinner had passed, and Bruce was about to return to his linen seat when he overheard both sons from the doorway. 

“Like what,” Dick said, apathetic again. The sunroom was dark now, lit only by a single end table lamp which turned the glass windows into dark mirrors. 

“I don’t know. Something.” Jason’s hands were stuffed deep in his pockets. “We can go out.”

“Out?” Dick echoed. 

“Yeah. Out. I can drive if you don’t want to.”

“It’s cold.”

“Okay, fine then. We can stay in.”

“And do what?”

“Something,” Jason said again. Bruce could hear the frustration in his voice. “We can break into the cellar. There’s got to be something good down there.”

“I’m not supposed to drink.”

“Oh,” Jason said softly, as if reprimanded. “Meds?”

“Well, yeah. Technically.”

A pause. 

“You’re not taking your meds,” Jason said accusingly. Bruce’s eyebrows rose at this. 

“I’m taking the ones I need,” Dick said. 

“So no pain meds,” Jason translated. Dick was quiet. An affirmation. Jason sighed. “Whatever. It’s your dumb life. Come on. Let’s get drunk.”

Bruce heard a slight rustling as Dick presumably rose off the couch. Bruce quickly ducked into an adjoining hallway. He watched as the shadows of his sons passed by. 

The next day, Jason was gone, and Dick stumbled down for brunch with dark shadows beneath his eyes. Alfred had taken Damian out for the day, deciding the boy needed to run off some energy at the mall. Bruce was seated at the breakfast table, coffee and tablet in hand. On the other end of the table, Cass and Tim perked up as Dick entered. 

“Dude,” Tim whispered, eyes darting over to Bruce quickly. Bruce kept his eyes glued to his tablet. “Are you  _ hungover? _ ” Cass shot Tim a look as though he was stupid. Dick, not answering, slumped down into a seat next to Cass. 

“Food?” Cass offered kindly. Upon Dick’s return, Alfred had subtly suggested that all the Wayne children push food upon Dick whenever possible. Cass’s plate held half a waffle. Dick eyed it briefly. 

“Sure,” he said. Indifferent. Apathetic.  _ Be assertive, _ Bruce thought.  _ Say ‘no.’ _ But Dick ripped Cass’s half-waffle in half once again, eating it neither daintily nor ravishingly.

After brunch, Tim disappeared to complete his homework. It was a weekend, but the last days of fall semester were encroaching, and with it finals. Cass descended down into the cave, gym bag and water bottle in hand. That left, once again, Dick and Bruce to retire in the sunroom. 

Dick’s hangover was pretty obvious, but Bruce elected not to speak on it. It would of course be far more preferable if Dick and Jason bonded through other means, but Bruce didn’t want to say anything to deter Jason’s next visit. 

“Did Jason leave this morning?” Bruce asked the obvious. 

“Mm,” Dick said. 

“Did he say when he would visit again?”

“No.”

Bruce glanced up from his paperwork. Dick’s eyes were trained again through the sunroom’s glass windows, which stretched floor to ceiling and also covered a slanted portion of the ceiling itself, allowing a view of the oaks sprawling above. As a child, Bruce enjoyed reading in this room during the summertime. He avoided it during the winter. All the glass exposed nothing but white hills of snow, which seemed cold and lonely. 

“I saw you were listening to an audiobook yesterday,” Bruce said conversationally. “Any good?”

Dick shrugged, shirt scraping against couch. “It’s alright.” A pause. “It’s about two people falling in love.”

Bruce felt something sour settle in his stomach. “Oh?”

“Yeah. They… they’re like intellectual soulmates. And friends. But it’s also the eighties, and they’re two dudes, so…” Dick drifted off. “Jason recommended it to me a while ago, but I never got around to reading it. Thought I’d give it a listen.”

A while ago, as in  _ before. _

“It’s sad, though,” Dick said. Bruce didn’t dare interrupt. This was the most Dick had said at one time since his return. “Their relationship is just… so intense, and they both kinda know they’ll never find anything quite like it. But they both have to just live with it… cause it’s the eighties…”

Dick stopped speaking. 

“Sounds like you really liked the book.”

Dick shifted, rolling over to face the back of the couch. 

“I guess so.”

II.

“Beautiful,” Slade whispered, his breath hot in the crook of Dick’s shoulder. “Make noise for me.”

At first, Dick thought Slade meant Beautiful as an adjective. He was calling Dick beautiful the way people called paintings beautiful, or flower blossoms beautiful. But commands always followed the word Beautiful, and Dick soon realized Slade was using the word as a pronoun. 

_ Beautiful, come over here.  _

_ Beautiful, don’t cry.  _

_ Beautiful, make some noise for me. _

He could still hear the word on Slade’s tongue, each syllable rich with the man’s baritone. There was no way he’d ever be able to hear that word the same again. No one could mean it as much as Slade meant it. 

The first time Slade called him beautiful was after Slade first raped him. (Rape was the word everyone was making him use.) Lying flat on his back on Slade’s bed, Slade between his legs, Dick couldn’t help but cry at the sheer proximity. Slade was everywhere. Inside him. Around him. There was too much going on, and Dick was hurting terribly between his legs. It was too dry, too wet. Too cold, too burning. Then, the pad of a thumb swept across his cheekbone— 

“Beautiful,” Slade said. Reverently, the way people beheld art. “Beautiful, don’t cry.”

When he was not on Slade’s bed, he was in the closet. The closet was in the same room as the bed. The closet was not very large, but it was big enough to hold Dick and the chair he was tied to, as well as a number of old coats that hung on either side of Dick’s head, which had the stale smell of mothballs. There was also two sets of shoes in the corner: a pair of black high heels—three inches, economical, and a pair of kids rainboots. At first, the shoes brought him company. Later, he came to resent them.

There was also a bathroom in the bedroom that Dick would be allowed into. The bathroom was simple, if a bit old. The toilet flushed via a pullable chain. There was no shower, only a porcelain tub. Up high above the tub were six cubes of acrylic block windows that distorted the view outside. Once, during a bath, Dick had stood on the edge of the tub and peered outside. There was just white. Endless, endless white. It had snowed, and Dick didn’t even know. 

Other than the bathroom window, there was a window in Slade’s bedroom above the head of the bed. The curtains, thick and floral, were always pulled shut. On cloudy days, or what Dick presumed were cloudy days, the curtains left the bedroom cold and dreary. Once in a while, however, the sun flared hot enough that it seemed to burn through the curtains, reaching far enough to fall through the slats of the closet door to warm Dick’s bare legs. Those days were rare. 

The only times Dick got close to those curtains were when Dick was on Slade’s bed. Slade liked to fuck with Dick on his back, Slade between his legs. When Slade was close, he’d bury his nose in the crook of Dick’s neck, and Dick would let his head fall back, far enough back that he could see through the window from beneath the curtains. There was a tree outside the window, it’s thick, ancient branches sprawling overhead. Once, Dick spotted a bird. 

Dick didn’t see the rest of the cabin until the day Bruce and Jason found him. While Bruce stormed through the rest of the cabin, searching for any clues left behind by Slade, Jason wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and guided him hand in hand out of the bedroom. In Dick’s memory, he couldn’t tell if Jason was impatient or if everything had really moved that fast around him. There was a kitchen, a living room, another bathroom, and so, so much light. So many more windows. The brightness hurt Dick’s eyes, but he wanted to look. To read the titles of the books on Slade’s coffee table. To memorize the mug stains on the kitchen table. Dick felt a stab of betrayal as Jason quickly tugged him along. Did Slade really have so much of a life without him? All those hours in the closet, the bedroom, when Dick thought of nothing but Slade, Slade, Slade—had Slade been out here, escaping into a book, stirring a hot mug of coffee, his mind on something else?

Dick didn’t dare tell anyone these thoughts. He knew what Bruce thought of him. That his mind had been twisted, warped. But then Jason visited, and they stole a bottle of wine older than the both of them from the cellar, trading swigs in one of the many parlour rooms that no one would ever find them in. 

“Did you…” Dick had said, staring up at the dark ceiling. It was late evening then, and neither of them had bothered to turn on the lights. Instead, they lay on the floor, soaking up the dim blue light that fell through the garden facing windows. “Did you see a TV when you were there?”

“What? Where?” Jason said, his words slightly slurred. 

“In the cabin,” Dick said. Jason fell quiet. “I saw books, but I don’t think I saw a TV.”

A moment passed, then Jason let out an aggrieved sound. 

“Why do we have to talk about this,” Jason bemoaned. He sounded like a child, whining. “You’re here now, isn’t that enough?”

Another pause. 

“Sorry,” Dick said. Jason let out an exasperated, drawn out huff, as though pained by Dick’s apology. 

“Just stop it, Dickie. Just stop.”

*

Dick hated to do it, but there was no other way. 

“Why?” Damian said suspiciously, taking a small step back. They were in the sunroom, Dick lying at his usual spot. Damian had been merely passing through. Bruce was gone, summoned to some emergency meeting at WE. It was the perfect time for Dick to make his move. 

“I just need it for a second, Dames,” Dick said. He knew how he sounded: desperate, starved. He didn’t care. “Come on.  _ Please. _ For me.”

_ Please _ was a word Dick was using far more often these days. 

“But Father…” Damian said unsurely, looking caught. Dick eyed the outline of Damian’s phone in his sweatshirt pocket. Ever since Dick’s return, Bruce had outlawed Dick’s usage of the internet. It was disabled on his phone, his computer. When he wanted to download a new audiobook or a new album, he had to ask Bruce. Bruce would then take his phone and do it for him. It was all, according to Bruce, a means of protecting him from the news. 

“You don’t need to see any of that,” Burce had said. But they both knew Dick didn’t care what the media had to say about him. 

“Come on, Dami,” Dick said, trying to not let impatience creep into his voice. “You know how overbearing B can be. I just need it for a few seconds.”

He stared at Damian pleadingly, hoping there was some part of his brother that was still young enough to do whatever his older brother told him to do. 

“Fine,” Damian finally said.

“God, Damian, I knew I could count on you,” Dick whispered, reaching forward to hug the boy to his chest. Damian kept his arms to his sides, unresponsive. Once Damian shrugged away, the boy held out his phone between his thumb and forefinger as though he hated to touch it. Dick quickly took the phone before the boy could change his mind.

As Damian waited, his eyes darting toward Dick’s hands nervously, Dick pulled up the internet browser. Without hesitation, he typed a single name:  _ Deathstroke. _

No sightings. Not even a whiff of trouble. Dick bit his lip. He typed a new name.

_ Slade Wilson. _

Nothing. Just nothing. Dick squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them. Then he exited out of the browser and handed the phone back to Damian, who snatched it away quickly.

  
  
  


After dinner, he was bleeding again. He was alone in the bathroom, ready to take a shower, when he realized it. 

The spot of blood was small, but strikingly dark and violent against the pale blue of his boxers. He touched the blood gingery, watching his fingertip come away slightly pink. Slowly, he brought his fingertip to his bottom lip, letting it rest there. He could smell the iron, as sharp as a blade. Then he tossed his boxers on the pile with the rest of his clothes and stepped into the shower. 

The first time he bled was after the first time Slade fucked him. He didn’t even know there was blood until Slade crawled off the bed, revealing dark, red spots between Dick’s legs. A naive part of Dick thought that it would get better. Somehow, his body would grow stronger. But then he just bled, and bled, and bled. 

There was also the time with the knife.

Slade never did anything about the bleeding. A part of Dick thought that Slade liked it. That he liked the stains on his bedsheets, marking the vulnerability of the human body, its limitations. Nothing like blood says that one has existed. After a while, Dick came to like it too. 

In the shower, Dick periodically adjusted the water to be hotter and hotter. He liked when steam blurred the air, making everything hazy. The heat burned his skin a little at first, but then the pain dulled. He thought of the blood and how it felt hot and wet between his legs. When Dick looked down, he realized he was hard. 

A crimson blush quickly colored Dick’s cheeks.  _ He raped you, _ Dick thought. But the thought felt empty. He was alone, after all. If he turned the tap to cold, willing his erection away, who would benefit? Bruce wouldn’t even know. Dick would just suffer for nothing. He was raped, they said. Didn’t he deserve then, if nothing else, the right to choose when and how he got off?

Slowly, shyly, Dick reached between his legs. He stroked gently, then rougher and rougher, pulling voiceless breaths out of himself. He imagined a larger, calloused hand. He imagined blood. 

When it was over, Dick felt empty. The water hitting his back seemed lukewarm. He shut off the tap and toweled himself off. His body in the mirror looked flushed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a while ago intending for it to be a multi chapter fic. Things kinda fizzled out, tho, cause I didn't plan this out at all, so this might stay a one-shot...? Also... did anyone catch the spongebob reference? 
> 
> Kudos and Comments always appreciated!


End file.
